We're

We're We live in a self-focused, success-driven culture, and the Bible offers radical teaching concerning where we can find true meaning and significance.

Today on Truth for Life, we'll listen to a college graduation address given

by Alistair Begg, a message he titled, The Only Basis for Boasting.

I'm reminded of a comment by the late George Burns, the little comedian, who said,

on an occasion such as this, on an evening like this, with a temperature like this,

if you are entrusted with a privilege such as is now afforded to me, it is imperative

that you have a good beginning and a good ending, and you keep the two of

them as close together as you possibly can.

I think that was well stated, and I have been at many a graduation event where the person

entrusted with a privilege that is now mine

extended his sell-by date and disappointed everyone, people wishing they had graduated years earlier.

Tomorrow, the graduating class will walk out into a world in which they have emerged in a culture

that has encouraged men and women to believe themselves to be the center of the universe.

A culture in which it seems perfectly normal and reasonable to have been ferried to school in a minivan

bearing a bumper sticker that proclaims the genius of the inhabitant of the minivan, namely you.

In his latest book, The Road to Character, David Brooks observes that while in an earlier era,

there was a stronger social sanction against blowing your own trumpet, getting above yourself,

being too big for your britches, we now live in a culture of self-promotion that says,

recognize my accomplishments, I am pretty special. Now, lest you think that I, an aging baby boomer,

I'm here to suggest that my vintage avoided this selfism.

Let me quickly disavow such a notion. I think in large measure we could be said to have

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